


Elias and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

by forsaken corruption (Demixian)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 'Murphy's Law' AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Worms, Comedy, Gen, background jonmartin, where everything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23493703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demixian/pseuds/forsaken%20corruption
Summary: "The Magnus Archives. The Ultimate Ritual. Meticulous. Fool-proof. The definition of an intricate ritual.""That's not what that--""And then this twat comes along and cocks it all up."In which Jonah's plan to mark Jon with every entity goes wrong in every way possible, featuring Jon becoming an avatar of every single entity BUT the Eye.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 227
Kudos: 399





	1. Corrupted

**Author's Note:**

> this is 100% serious literature grab your pinot grigio and a cheeseboard

As Jon stood, riddled with writhing worms, he wondered why his boss looked so distraught.

“How… Did this…Happen?” Elias said with excruciating slowness, enunciating like a RADA reject.

“I just don’t think you quite appreciate the benefits of having lots and lots of worms inside you.”

Elias looked up at Jon, or rather looked through him, as the many porous holes let a little light from the back shine through. He pulled his lips into a tight, constipated smile. “I’m sure I don’t. But, if you’d care to explain how you became a — a, um…A candidate for these—“ he gestured to a straggler dancing about on his desk,”— _things_. I’d appreciate that _very much_.”

“Well, they just took a liking to me, I s’pose,” said Jon, chewing on something Elias evidently didn’t like thinking about. “Jane’s a lovely girl, really, you must sit down with her one day and just talk it out. Very interesting woman.”

“Jane Prentiss is dead.”

“Oh, dear,” said Jon. A little worm poked its head out from his ear canal. “Oh, that is a shame. She won’t be much fun to talk to now. What did you do that for?”

“To save _you—“_ Elias ground his teeth, “—all of you. I did _not_ plan on letting _any_ of my archival employees be… Consumed by this entity—… That is to say, this monster.”

Jon grimaced, seething sympathetically. “Oof. Bad luck there, Elias." He tutted pityingly. "I can get Martin to make you some tea, if you like. He’s a bit terrified of me, now, so he can’t refuse. I could get him to polish your shoes, if you need.”

“That will be all, Archivist.”

“What’s that?”

Elias felt a metaphysical clip round the ear. “ _Jon_.”

“Right-o. If you need anything, I’ll be rotting away downstairs.”

“Mm. How amusing.”

“What?” Jon said indignantly. “I’m not joking. It’s going to smell really rather dreadful. I love it, now, of course, but you might want to consider getting some of that air freshener stuff."

With that, Jon left, leaving behind a rancid smell and an air of joviality that was utterly ill-suited to him, both in personality and appearance.

As the door shut behind the Archivist, Elias muttered a single, very soft, “ _Bugger.”_


	2. Unknown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sasha takes Jon to see her favourite table!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feat. NotJon

Artefact Storage was a dusty, musty old room. Luckily for Jon, in his new state of Filth, this was positively intoxicating.

“Just through here,” Sasha muttered as she guided Jon through towers of assorted esoteric artefacts. Jon itched at his clear, woefully non-porous skin, still sorely missing the feeling of being _consumed._

A delighted little gasp escaped Sasha’s lips as they reached the very back of the room. She stood like a statue, breathing — or seeming to breathe — with trance-like steadiness. Jon couldn’t fathom what all the fuss was about.  


“I don’t suppose you’ve seen any, uh, flies or maggots or—“ 

Sasha shushed him sharply. “Look.” Her mouth split and curled unnaturally into a wide, toothy sneer. “Here it is.”

“What? The table?”

“Yes. The Table.”

“Oh.” Jon frowned, looking around with only the vaguest interest. “Are you sure you haven’t seen any little critters about? Not even a spider?”

“Look at the sodding table, Archivist.”

  
  
Jon threw his hands up in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. Sorry. Still recovering. That bloody anti-fungal stuff worked fast. Too fast, if you ask me. What’s with everybody calling me Archivist, by the way? Don’t tell me the whole worm business has put you completely off me. You know, ‘Jon’ _will_ suffice.”

“Look. At. The Table.”

“Sorry, yes.” Jon nodded, obliging. “… Sorry.” 

And so he looked. And looked. And looked and looked and looked and suddenly he was sat back, reclined as if in the softest leather, looking up, up, up at a thousand-foot tall screen that blinked and moved jerkily. How long had he been looking?

“Jon? Jon!”

The screen jerked to one side and Jon felt the nebulous world around him shift and sway as the screen turned to encompass his boss, hair unkempt and eyes bloodshot. _Back on the ganja, then?_ Jon said — meant to say, anyway. But it didn’t come out of his mouth. Instead, another voice emerged from deep, deep below.

“Hello, Elias.”

“ _Bugger it_ ,” Elias growled through gritted teeth. “Come with me. Now.”

***

“Sit down… _Jon_.”

Without wanting to, Jon obliged. Or rather, his vehicle did. All Jon did was sit back and watch from within.

“Right.” Elias seemed to steam as he sat down across from Jon and his vehicle, his face contorted into a scowl. “I suppose you think you’ve won.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Elias.” The voice echoed at a low, nauseating resonance all around Jon’s consciousness. He wanted to shake himself out of the paralysis, but even this agency wasn’t granted to him.

Elias continued to steam. “You know damn well what I mean, Stranger.” One eye was wide, the other straining to squint. Once again, Jon’s boss had the air of retaining a considerable amount of waste.

“You can’t stop us,” boomed the voice from deep within the vehicle. “We shall have this final dance.”

“That’s quite enough of the cryptic prose,” Elias snapped. “I’m only going to keep trying, you know. You haven’t won yet. This one may be gone, but there will be more, mark my words, and you’re only making it easier by making your plans so tediously obvious.”

_Hang on,_ Jon tried to say. _What are you talking about?_

“You can keep trying,” the voice rung out. “You can’t try forever, though. That body’s getting old.”

_Well, that’s not very appropriate_. Jon frowned, or rather he went to do so and found he didn’t have a face to frown with. _This thing clearly hasn’t done the workplace etiquette seminar. ‘Comments on appearance are only appropriate if they remain within the parameters of clothing and do not extend to the body itself.’ Anyway, it’s not polite to allude to a man’s age._

“Your ritual isn’t going to work,” Elias said with a slither of a smug smile, now. “Whether I have anything to say about it or not.”

“We’ll see, Ceaseless Watcher.” 

_What on earth are they on about?_

“I think you mean _I’ll_ see. You’ll probably just go back to wearing people’s skins.”

“You _what?!”_

With an almighty jerk, Jon was hurled back into being.

Elias’ eyes widened, glistening slightly as he sat back. “… Jon?”

“What do you mean ‘wearing people’s skins’?” Jon’s jaw, which was very much real and in his control now, dropped. “I don’t do that. Do I? Is _that_ what the worms were made of?”

“Jon!” Elias cried, almost childlike in his joy as he leapt up from his seat. “Jon, it’s you!”

“Yes, it bloody well is!” said Jon, crossing his arms and pursing his lips indignantly. “Now, what’s all this about Strangers and dancing and Ceaseless Watchers and _skin?_ I demand to know what the _hell_ is going on and _why_ I was just stuck in the bloody sunken place!”

Elias cocked his head to one side. “You watched Get Out? What did you think?”

“Unique concept, very well executed.”

“I watched it three times, you know.”

“It really is a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it?” Jon muttered with a laboured sigh. “Now will you _please_ explain what _that_ was.”

Elias sank in his seat, grinding his teeth restlessly. One long-nailed index finger tapped on the desk a couple of times before tracing the shape of an oval. At last, he looked up at Jon with a weary gaze. “Alright, then. Let’s start from the very beginning.”


	3. Desolate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon chats with his best friend Jurgen and Martin experiences a fierce awakening

“And he told you? Just like that?”

Jon shrugged with a suppressed laugh as he brought the mug to his lips. “Suppose he just got scared of losing me. Touching really. Afraid he’s a bit old for my tastes, however — no offence.”

Jurgen dismissed the comment with a wave. “None taken, I assure you.” He set his own mug down and locked his hands together in thought. “Kind of them to give dear Sasha back in one piece. Not very characteristic, though, I’ll admit.”

“It meant she could quit, at least,” Jon said with another shrug. “The Eye doesn’t want another entity’s rejects, after all.”

“And you’re sure he doesn’t know about me?”

Jon placed a hand on Jurgen’s knee reassuringly. “Certain. You’d be smart to bugger off while you can, though. I can sense he’s getting a bit antsy, what with all my hi-jinx.”

“Indeed. Fraternising with _two_ of the Eye’s enemies. You’re lucky it even still wants you — well, not lucky, I suppose.” Jurgen gave him a sad, pitying smile.

“Thanks for the tea, Jurg,” Jon said, standing up. “I’d better be off. Stopping rituals for eldritch Gods, and all that. I’m to speak to a, uh… Jude Perry?”

Jurgen nodded sagely. “Ah. Yes. Be careful with her. She’s rather… Let’s say, feisty.”

“Please,” said Jon with a wave, “I’ve been Corrupted, I’m sure I can take on a bit of fire.”

“Not fire,” Jurgen corrected. “Heat.”

“Yes, well.” Jon’s hands slipped into his pockets as he looked down at his shoes reticently. “Could do with that. The weather’s always a bit miserable round here.”

***

The break room was flooded with the cool, blue light of dusk. Pipes ached with inaction, groaning under the weight of stagnant water.

Martin placed a hand on the tap valve and twisted it with a great effort. Disgustingly viscous water seeped out from the tap’s mouth into the kettle and Martin held back a slight retch. 

“He’s been gone a while,” came a half-sympathy-laced, half-teasing voice.

“Did you want a cup?”

Tim approached Martin somewhat hesitantly, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Sasha called. Wanted to know how you’re doing — no, the other mug. No, no it’s blue. Yeah, that one.”

“That’s nice of her.”

“It’s madness, isn’t it?” Tim made no effort to hide the excitement in his tone now. “Our boss, avatar of the eldritch.”

“Don’t.” Martin grimaced. “Oh, God, he’s going to get himself killed. I don’t understand why he doesn’t just quit.”

“You can’t quit this place,” Tim replied with a grin. “We’re family.”

Martin stopped for a moment, holding the kettle out in front of himself. “What if he _really_ can’t quit, Tim?”

“Tell me something I _don’t_ know.” Tim rolled his eyes and snorted derisively. “Workaholic weekly’s looking for their covergirl.”

“I’m serious. He keeps hurting himself. He got stabbed the other day. We have to protect him.”

Tim pouted. “Oh, of _course_ ,” he cooed. “We _must_ protect our poor, vulnerable, adult, perfectly capable Archivist, musn’t we?”

“Sod off.”

“N’oh,” Tim tutted, still pouting. “You’re such a bully.”

In a split second, the room filled with a stifling heat and the cool, blue light turned to a wicked amber. The door to the break room creaked, letting in a shaft of uncomfortably bright light.

“What’re you two tits talking about?”

Stood at the threshold was none other than Jonathan Sims — hair clipped and gelled into an undercut that blazed a copper bottle blue. A pair of ray bans sat on the scarred bridge of his nose and, most utterly bizarrely, he wore a weathered leather jacket, cracked with age. 

Tim gazed at him with a deeply amused smirk. “ _Loving_ the new look, boss.”

“J-Jon?” Martin asked, in earnest, squinting to check whether the Stranger was at it again. But it really was him. Somehow, that was even more disconcerting.

Jon swept past Tim and stopped just before Martin, looking up at him over the rims of his designer glasses. He took the kettle from Martin by the handle, then placed another hand slowly and confidently on its side, keeping eye contact with Martin the entire time. After a moment, the kettle began to whistle and steam. Jon poured the now scalding water into Martin’s mug, which already had a teabag in it, still keeping his gaze as he poured. He proceed to stir it and pour a splash of milk into the brew, all while not breaking the stare. Then he paused. After a beat, he handed the mug to Martin and gave him the tiniest, curtest salute.

“Be careful,” he said shortly. “It’s hot.”

With that, Jon turned on his heel and left the way he came out. A calm wash of blue fell over the room once more.

Tim leaned in to a stunned Martin, glancing down at the bubbling brew. “Still want him to quit?” Tim asked, far too sweetly.

“Not just yet,” Martin breathed.

At once, the pair heard an incensed shout carry down from upstairs. It sounded rather like somebody in between laughing and cursing in a rage.


	4. Vastly Underrated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon does some more soul searching, Martin and Tim meet a new version of Jon and Jonah -- erm, Elias, rather -- does everything in his power not to snap.

Jonah Magnus sat in his office, fuming — and not because of the still-smouldering patch of burnt fabric on his right sleeve. He ground his teeth with a reignited intensity, hands clasped together and propped up by his elbows on the sleek, mahogany desk as he thought of what to do about the Archivist.

The door burst open, smoking slightly from the impact.

“What’s up, brittle bones?” spat the Archivist, removing his sunglasses with a swift motion. 

“I— What?”

Jon threw himself down recklessly on the nice, plush chair opposite his boss. “You asked f’me?”

“You can drop the act,” Elias muttered.

“Oi,” Jon snapped. “This ain’t no act, guv.”

Elias’ teeth bared themselves. “The accent can get lost too.” He grimaced. “Being an avatar does not completely change your personality.”

“Nah, that’s where you’re wrong, mate,” said Jon in the sort of obnoxious East End affectation that Elias had come to expect only from the Stranger. “Jude told all when I accepted ‘er offer of membership to the Lightless Flame. Certain entities have a greater effect than others. ‘Ere, remember when I was all filled with worms and shit?”

  
  
“ _Viscerally_.”

“Well, when I had all those little buggers inside o’ me, I was more… Er, let’s say, _compassionate_. Lovin’, affectionate, all that lark. The Corruption is all about that ‘love’ bollocks, ain’t it? Now, though, I couldn’t care less if you went up in flames right ‘ere in front of me.” Jon gave a cheeky little wink which, paired with the dark circles and scars under the eye that winked, came off more like the unsolicited advance of an ageing cad than a mischievous ‘bad boy’.

With a ragged sigh, Elias shut his eyes tightly and just thought to himself, for the first time in quite a while. He inhaled sharply before saying, “well, if you don’t mind me saying, this… Affectation isn’t a particularly good colour on you.”

“I dunno,” said Jon, combing a hand through his copper locks. “I reckon I look—“  


  
“—If you’re about to say any of the following: hot, smoking, fire, or ‘lit’… I suggest you stop talking now or I will, so help me Beholding, leap across this table and _throttle_ you.”  


Jon shrugged. “I was gonna say ‘adorable’, but I’m flattered all the same.”

“You need to shake this,” Elias said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We can’t stop the Unknowing with you in this… State. I’m sending you to get a statement from Michael Crew. He’s Vast aligned. He should snuff the Flame out.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Jon stood now, fluffing the collar of his leather jacket. “Can I stay Desolated for, like, another hour?”  


“If it involves any more untoward workplace conduct, the answer is no.”

“Oh, that’s fine then,” said Jon, “coz I’m just gonna go do some pyrotechnics for Martin. He _loves_ it.” He turned and began to leave, a trail of ash manifesting in his wake.

“That is what I’d classify as ‘untoward’, Archivist!” Elias called after him. But the Archivist was gone, as if in a puff of smoke.

***

Tim hung up the phone as Martin entered the break room with a stack of files, letting the hand holding his mobile drop to his side.

“Are you going to take that thing off, or is this just going to be a new part of the dress code, now? Because I don’t think ‘fear-entity-manifested leather jackets’ fall under ‘business attire’.”

Martin went red. “Wh - but - it’s—it’s _cold_ down here, and this is just the warmest thing I’ve got.”

“It’s not even yours. Won’t Jon want it back when he returns from whatever goose chase he’s on this time?”

“With his track record?” Martin scoffed. “He’ll probably be a new avatar by the time he walks through the institute’s doors again.”

“Don’t get me _started_.” Tim flung himself down onto the break room sofa. “That stupid automatic revolving thing gets on my nerves. Why couldn’t they have just kept the old doors? I mean, how long is it going to be before someone gets stuck in there and _dies_?”

“Ugh.” Martin took a couple of statements out of the pile and began to shuffle the pages. “Don’t be so morbid — aha!”

“Found it?”

“Yes! I _knew_ he’d stolen my lucky bulldog clip. That bastard.”

  
  
“That _gorgeous_ bastard,” Tim drawled, poking Martin with his foot.

  
  
“ _One_ time, I said that! Once! Do you know how many times _you’ve_ drooled over some woman or bloke upstairs and I’ve kept shtum about it for you?”

  
  
Tim chuckled, throwing his head back. “That’s _different_ , I—“

“Champagne!” cried a sweet, airy voice from the corridor. “Champagne for _everyone!”_

  
  
Martin and Tim locked eyes at once.

“You don’t think…”

A twinkle appeared in Tim’s eyes. He sat up on the sofa at once. “Shall we go have a look?”

The pair of them darted out to the Archive corridors, instantly teetering from the impact of a swift gust of wind that dissipated as they came to a steady standstill again.

Jon glided down towards them, two long legs dancing about in a pair of billowing trousers, wide enough to hide two medium-sized dogs underneath. There was enough fabric there to build a marquee. 

His unusually soft, fluffy tufts of greying hair scraping the ceiling, Jon gazed down upon his two assistants dreamily. “Hello, my dears!”

“Jon.” Martin stated, in lieu of anything meaningful. There wasn’t much else he could really say to this one. He’d never had to _look up_ at Jon before.

Tim gazed up at his boss with dazed admiration. “Finally had that growth spurt, eh, Boss?”

“Ohohoho!” Jon chuckled softly, breathily, his head bobbing back for a moment before turning back down towards the two. “I _have_ missed you, Timothy. We simply must have a catch up.”

With a sigh that did more to hide his abject confusion than anything else, Martin crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows, shaking his head in resignation as he retreated to the break room. Jon followed him, just barely avoiding the top of the doorframe.

“Darling Martin,” Jon cooed, his arms floating out at his sides. 

Martin bowed his head demurely, smiling. He stepped forward hesitantly, expecting an embrace, but Jon instead twirled around performatively, showing off how his trouser legs spun and flew out like miniature ballgowns. 

“What do you think?” he asked with a flourish.

Tim walked into the room after him, staring unabashedly at the just-settling fabric. “Well, boss,” he began, looking up at Jon with a wry smile. “I think you’d be right at home at the Taj Mahal.”

“Oh!” Jon cried out, sighing theatrically. “Isn’t he a _riot_ , Marto?”

Martin frowned. “Jon.”

“Yes, darling?”

He looked at him over the rims of his glasses, in much the same way a parent does when admonishing a child. “Have you become an avatar of the Vast?”

“Avatar? Mm, no,” Jon mused, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “I prefer to say that I am Engaged. You could say that I… ‘ _Fell_ ’.”

“Hah,” Tim honked, slapping his thigh. “Nice one, Jonny.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Jon, spinning around again and floating over to the sofa. “You’ll be coming to the wedding, I trust?”

“The what?” Martin clipped.

“Martin.” Jon held his hands out towards him with a beguiling smile as if presenting him to an audience. Indeed, Tim was instantly enthralled in the dialogue exchange that followed. “Would you do me the honour of being the best man?”

“ _Whose_ wedding, Jon?”

Tim pressed his tongue between his teeth, giving a half-stifled laugh. “Oho, this is _excellent.”_

“The wedding of my beloved and I,” said Jon with an actor’s intonation. “The Awful Deep. The Wide Open. The—“

Martin threw up his hands, shutting his eyes as if shielding them from the mental image. “Yes, alright, I get the picture.”

“Wahey,” Tim jeered. “Wide open, eh?”

“ _Tim_ ,” Martin growled.

“I’ll be your best man if he won’t, boss,” said Tim, grinning rather too widely now. “You’ll be wanting a _big_ ceremony, I’m guessing.”

  
  
“Oh, _yes_ ,” Jon swooned, flinging himself down onto the sofa. “I want the whole world to be there.”

  
  
Martin turned and snorted with indignation. “I think this is my least favourite Jon so far,” he hissed to a positively gleeful Tim who sidled up next to him.

“I think this one’s my favourite,” Tim replied.

“Keep it breezy, baby,” Jon drawled, gliding out the other door and towards his office.

***

Jonah held a single pencil in both hands, gripping it at either end with a crazed expression. He wanted to snap it, but he simply didn’t have the power in himself to do it. All of his energy was going into not succumbing to the overwhelming desire to go on a rampage about the institute, if only to expel his building frustration at the state of things. The Eye told him that the Archivist would be here soon and Jonah very much wanted to cry.

He heard the draught before it came but it still took him by surprise when it blew about the room as the Archivist entered.

“You wanted to see me, darling Elias?”

Elias glared.

Jon fluttered his lashes demurely. “Well?”

“You did it. _Again.”_

He pouted, looking off into space. “Did _what?”_

The air was chilly all around them, although the central heating had been cranked up ever since Jon returned from Mike Crew’s abode.

“I sent Daisy to rescue you before the Vast got a hold…” Elias sighed, holding back tears. “But it seems _that_ plan failed, too.”

“What was the other plan?”

“ _How_ did this happen? I thought I told you that you weren’t to align yourself with any more entities.”

Jon shrugged, coming to rest like a fallen feather on the plush chair he’s sat in far too much recently. “I don’t know what to tell you, dear. I just… Fell for Them.”

“Them?”

Jon simpered. “Yes,” he sighed. “ _Them._ The Wide Open. My beloved. Have you met them?”

  
  
  
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Elias muttered through fiercely gritted teeth. “Although my ex-husband knows one of their… Lot.”

“Ex?” Jon frowned with detestable pity. “Oh, Elias, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be, we’re getting re-married next week.” Elias sat forward now, his eyes boring deep into Jon’s. “This is the absolute last time I’m going to tell you, Jon. No more deviating. I’m sending you into the Buried with an anchor, and you’re to stay there until the… _Vastness_ has worn off. You’re _not_ to become an avatar of it, though, understand?”

“Do what you like,” Jon drawled, “but _nothing_ shall separate me from the Falling Titan.”

“Yes, yes,” Elias waved him away. “Get out of my sight.”

Jon made a little indignant noise like a ‘hmph!’ before sweeping out of the room, trouser legs billowing like clouds behind him. As the door swung shut from the force of the ensuing draught, Jonah dropped his head on the table in despair.


	5. Swathed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon takes refuge from the world and Jonah is about ready to snap.

A low, growling, mounting, groaning, moaning, agony-stricken, lamenting groan bled through the gaps of the mountainous pile of blankets.

“Hangover,” Tim said with a sympathetic tilt of the head. “Poor thing.”

Martin, who was perched on one end of the sofa, shook his head. “No. No, it’s another one of these, um… States.”

“You sure? Sounds like a hangover to me. After all, being passed around different fear entities like a joint’s got to have an effect over time.” Tim pulled up a chair next to Martin and the mass of slowly rising and deflating blankets. “Do you reckon they stack, or is it like a series of one night stands?”

“Why don’t you go deal with that poor girl in Jon’s office, and leave us to it?” Martin, let’s be honest, _commanded_. Tim obliged, though not without throwing a sly look their way.

Another earth-turning groan seeped through the layers upon layers of fabric, the thing swathed deep beneath turning slightly in its… Slumber?

“Jon?”

It shifted again under the enormous weight.

Martin smiled gently. “If this is the Buried I’m talking to,” he said carefully, though just loud enough to penetrate the blanket mound, “I’d like to say thank you for at least keeping him safe. Every other entity so far has had him uh…” Martin chuckled uncomfortably. “… Riddled with worms or-or playing with fire or… Marrying the sky.”

Jon groaned.

“Oop.” Martin chuckled again, more jovially now. “Sensitive subject, eh? Maybe that’s why you’re like this, really. Breakups are difficult, I s’pose… Or, um, divorces, rather.”

They sat in silence for a while, and the silence pressed down on them with cosmic weight. It trod the borderline of oppressive and comforting.

After a while, Martin’s laugh cut through the silence. “That poor woman you brought back must be relieved. Well… Maybe not _completely_. The Archives aren’t all that… Spacious.”

A muffled “whatever,” grumbled from within the blanket mass.

Another few minutes of silence passed before Tim strode back into the break room, a young Japanese woman in tow.

He opened the biscuit cupboard and produced a packet of Hobnobs for the woman, who took one quite gladly.

“How are you, Yoshida?” Martin asked.

“Alright, I guess,” she replied with a shrug, taking a bite of her Hobnob thoughtfully.

Tim raised his eyebrows. “Really? Even after weeks of being in the…” He caught himself. “In the, uh—“

“The Buried? Yeah it was whatever. The cell service was kind of crap so I couldn’t text anyone. I just made up names for all the other people around me to pass the time, since we couldn’t really talk through all the dirt. There was Paula, the upside down woman, and Frank, he smelt a bit like cheese, then there was—“

The Jon Mound gave a great, agonising groan again. Tim reeled.

“How does he even do that? How does a man that tiny make such a big, deep sound?”

Martin gazed down admiringly at the shifting mass. “Probably one of his Avatar perks.”

“He sounds like my 14 year old brother,” Yoshida chuckled.

Suddenly, Jon sat up, throwing the blankets off forcefully. “Nobody asked, Yoshida! _GOD.”_ He stood, clumsily, gathering the blankets together. “Ugh, I can’t get _any_ sleep around here! You’re all such _Melvins_. I’m gonna go sleep in my office. _GOD.”_

With that, Jon flounced out, the blankets draped over his back like a chunky cape.

***

Jon sat, cross-armed, hunched, flared-denim-trousered legs spread out on the fateful plush armchair across from his boss. Elias looked at him with joyless eyes.

“Am I a joke to you?” he said, without feeling.

Jon shrugged, looking away as he brushed an unusually long fringe out of his eyes.

Elias’ expressionless face thawed into a scowl. “You know your position. You _know_ your importance.” He dragged both hands down his face, tugging down the skin beneath his eyes until he appeared ghoul-like. “So… _Why_ ,” he began with clear, agonising restraint behind the artificial pauses, “… _WHY_ do you _continue_ to disobey me?”

“Stop telling me what to do,” Jon sneered. "You’re not my _dad._ GOD, quit _nagging_ me. Just, like, let me do _me_ , for once.”

“This isn’t _you,_ Archivist!’ Elias snapped, stopping to reign himself in quickly. “Look… Clearly, you are predisposed in some way to… You’re—you’re evidently very _vulnerable_ to indoctrination. I thought that’d make you a perfect candidate for the Eye, but… Well, as it turns out, it makes you a perfect candidate… in general.”

Jon sat silently for a moment.

Elias sighed. “Are you hearing ‘Perfect’ by Simple Plan in your head, right now?”

Jon lurched forward, sneering at his boss. “ _No.”_ He sat back again. “… Yeah.”

“Right.” Elias took a minute to himself, consciously bringing his heart rate to a normal level before continuing. “Right. I’m coming to the end of my tether, Archivist. You can still stop the Unknowing, but you’ve _got_ to work with me on this, alright?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Jon flicked his head to one side, causing the fringe to follow in a dramatic fashion.

After a long, ponderous sigh, Elias contorted his mouth into a smile. “Why don’t you… Take a little stroll for me? Mhm? Round the block. We’ll see if you… Bump into anyone.”

“ _Fine_.” Jon got up from the chair, still hunched and slack-jawed. “But I’m taking my iPod.”

“Yes, yes, that’s fine just—just _go_ , I beg of you.”

And so he did.

Jonah sat back in his large, leather chair with another sigh, throwing his head back against the headrest. The Eye rested upon his shoulders and seemed to work them gently.

“It’ll be fine,” he whispered, perhaps just to himself. “She’s already sent them to find him. If I’m right, Michael will save him. If I’m lucky, It will kill him.”


	6. Twisted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon has fun with his new permanent roommates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW this chapter includes a very brief, respectful and informed discussion of DID. otherwise its hi-jinx as usual.

The room was far too _wide_.

Every fibre of Jon’s being was reaching out, out towards the thing that called to him in this, his latest wretched state. The two men with matching cases of Dick Van Dyke Disorder were stood like bodyguards either side of that beautiful, creaking, groaning masterpiece of carpentry. 

Locks of Jon’s greasy, dirty fringe fell into his eyes and it only reminded him of the sensation of _pressing_ that he yearned for in this dreadfully spacious hellhole, surrounded by bizarre statues of wax. He twinged with the bitter memory of a time not that long ago when he had relished in the Wide Open. It’s always difficult to forget an Ex so soon after the separation.

“Do you have a preferred brand of lotion?” asked that unsettling plastic figure as it wheeled over to him, googly eyes swinging around haphazardly in their clear plastic sockets. “Because you have _not_ been taking care of your skin…”

If its eyes could have moved of their own accord, they would have scanned down Jon’s pockmarked, zit-riddled face. As it happens, being in the Buried for a day is totally catastrophic for one’s pores.

The gag tasted very… Waxy. Jon made assorted honking sounds in lieu of words, as his mouth was too stuffed to form any. 

“I’ll just ask them to pick up a _selection_.” With that, the plastic figure began to wheel away.

All of a sudden, Jon was struck with an overwhelming sense of vertigo. He felt as if the floor, which was only inches from his toes in reality, was a thousand feet below him, and that the ceiling stretched up to the edge of the universe. Although the legs of his chair were planted firmly in place, he couldn’t shake the sensation of _falling._

His jaw went so slack that the gag tumbled out. He sighed with ecstasy. “ _You came back_ ,” he whispered, overcome with awe.

Nikola spun around at once. “What was that?” it asked in a falsely sweet tone, jerking its head to one side curiously.

Jon gave her an easy, dazed smile. “Keep it breezy, baby.”

And, less than a second later, the plastic menace was catapulted at a mile a minute through the air and promptly vanished with a gust of wind. 

***

Jon hadn’t quite thought that one through, apparently.

With the two Bert the Chimney Sweep impersonators gone, Jon was left there, bound to the chair with absolutely no means of rescue whatsoever. The silence was quite enough to make you go _mad_.

After what felt like days, tumbling laughter echoed and crescendoed in waves all about the room, rising and lowering in volume and creating new levels of sound altogether. Jon felt the presence of the voice both behind and before him at once, yet simultaneously there was menacing _absence_ that utterly surrounded him.

“Oh, Archivist, what have you done now?”

A small part of Jon, of what he desperately _hoped_ was still himself, almost wanted the voice to belong to his boss. He could handle a year’s worth of reprimands if only to know the sweet taste of normality again. But Jon had no such luck.

“It’s almost sad to see you like this,” said the voice, now very nebulously attached to a face. Its mouth moved just slightly out of sync with its words and it really rather pissed Jon off, what with his being somewhat of a perfectionist at heart.

As the Distortion spoke, however, Jon felt somewhat… Safe. Even when it announced that it was going to kill him.

Michael glitched and buzzed with static, sending fuzzy little shocks down Jon’s spine. Michael smiled, _horrifically_. “It’s earlier than I had hoped, but… That’s life!”

The world around Jon was so… Wrong. The waxworks were no longer unsettling, they were… _Were_ they? Were they really there at all? Yet this confusion, this duplicity, it… It comforted him. Everything both _was_ and _wasn’t_. It terrified him, yet he felt nothing. His hands were bound… And yet… Were they?

Jon was standing now, though he hadn’t meant to. He was also lying down and running and jumping and dead, all at the same time. He was walking down a flight of stairs with a number at every landing and every time the number was naught. Naught, naught, naught, naught… All the while, Michael spoke to him, guiding him to a door, and still, Jon stood and lay down and ran and jumped and died all at once. 

“Open it,” Michael hissed, his voice crackling and modulating pitch more than Christina Aguilera. “Open it and all this will be _over_." 

Jon’s breath, which was both ragged and heavy and yet so thin it was barely there, shuddered as he formulated his reply. “Yes,” he whispered, feeling the falling and the pressing and the burning and the squirming all washing away as he succumbed to this wondrous new gerund, this _twisting_. “Yes, I think I will.”

And so he turned the handle.

***

Jonah hardly needed to wait for Jon to walk back through the, in retrospect, rather conveniently revolving door to the Institute to know that _it_ had happened again. It was enough to bring the grossly overgrown man to gentle tears. He wiped them away at once, however, and cracked his knuckles as he Saw the aura of chaos building towards his institute. The Eye wanted its ritual and Jonah was going to See to it that it happened.

Down below, in the twisting hallways of the archives, Jon was walking towards his office.

Tim and Martin stood shielded by a bookcase, peering out cautiously at their boss as he strolled down the corridor.

“He looks normal,” Martin muttered.

Tim shook his head. “Looks can be deceiving.”

Jon turned the handle of the door to his office, which now squeaked gently with rust and disrepair.

Tim and Martin rushed to the doorway, standing flush against the wall to remain just out of sight, and peeked round the frame.

Jon sat down. Jon took out a statement and a blank tape, placing it into the recorder. Jon, in short, carried about his job quite as normal. As normal as it gets in the archives, in any case.

“Hm.” Tim frowned. “Well, that’s a bit of a let down.”

Just as the pair turned to leave, they heard Jon speak to himself — which would have been nothing out of the ordinary if it hadn’t been in a woman’s voice.

“ _You live like this, Jon?_ ”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly expecting guests, so I didn’t bother to tidy up before I was _kidnapped_.”

“ **If you ask me, it’s rather _too_ organised for my tastes.”**

“Yes, well, nobody actually _did_ ask you, did they, Michael?” Jon went silent, then scoffed to himself. “Now, now, there’s no need for that sort of language, is there?”

Martin turned to look at Tim, his eyes wide. “Spiral?”

“Spiral.”

At that, they both power-walked to the other side of the Archives.

***

“So there’s _three_ of you in there?”

Jon pulled the mug closer to himself, dipping a party ring in the brew. “It’s more like the two of them _in there_ , and I’m out here.”

“Hm.” Martin took a meditative bite of his Rich Tea. “So… It’s sort of like DID, then? ‘Coz I’ve got a couple of friends with DID and if _that’s_ the case then that's manageable, at least. There are plenty of resources online if you—“

“No, no, no, no.” Jon waved a hand, placing his mug back down. “See, DID is a way for the brain to compartmentalise trauma by segmenting different aspects of the consciousness into separate personalities, putting up barriers of amnesia between alters in order to protect the host. What’s happening with _me_ is that I’m on an eternal Zoom call with two really fucking annoying people who won’t shut up and can’t be muted. It’s very different.”

Martin nodded owlishly. “Ah,” he said, taking a sip. “Yeah, I can see how that’d get annoying.”

**“I like to think of it as an intricate game of _Twister,_ and you’re losing.”**

Not sure quite how to address Jon when he was temporarily glitching in and out of reality, Martin took another, nervous sip of tea.

Then came the female voice again. _“You’re the one who lost, Michael. Remember, I_ became _you.”_

“That’s enough, ladies.” Jon, who had returned to Being again, rolled his eyes aside to Martin with a slight smirk. “Always fighting over me.”

“So.. S-so are you… _you,_ still? I-I mean… I am talking to _Jon,_ right now, aren’t I? Not… Not Spiral Jon or-or Buried Jon or Vast—“

“Yes, I am, quite firmly, _me.”_ Jon flicked a little bit of lint off of his sleeve. “Although… I must say that I am somewhat more inclined to… _Mischief_ now.”

Martin raised an eyebrow, setting his mug down as he sat up in his seat in a bid to conceal his excitement. “Oh?” he pressed, affecting an air of nonchalance. “How so?

***

Elias slammed his mahogany table with such force that a little fracture formed in the varnish, though he was too mad with frustration to notice.

“HOW?! How on _EARTH_ did you even — how were you able to — _WHAT,_ exactly, is it about you, of all the sodding people in the world, that gives you the capacity to… The-the _ability_ to… You are _unbelievable!”_

  
  
Jon — or perhaps it was Michael — smiled. “Or am I?”

“Yes! Yes you are!” Elias threw his hands in the air with passion unmatched by even the most self-satisfied thespian. “That’s the whole buggering point, isn’t it? The ‘twisting deceit’, the ‘It Is Not What It Is’.”

“Or is it?”

Elias made a series of indistinguishable, fury-riddled noises that could most closely be described as grunts and splutters. He held his hands out with fingers curled into claws that fell pathetically short of Jon’s own, freshly-grown pincers. Elias’ hands shook as he reached out with them, as if trying desperately to grasp at his sanity before it entirely slipped away.

“Saying _‘or is it’_ after _every single thing_ that I say isn’t clever or scary. It’s just _annoying_.” 

Jon smiled.

Elias scowled. “No, Jon.”

Jon’s smile twisted into a grin.

“Jon, I swear to—“

“—Or is it?—”

“FUCK _OFF!_ ”

With a resonant smash, the mahogany table crashed onto its side.


	7. Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon pursues a legal career.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw mention of graphic violence

Jonah sat reclined artfully in his tall, overstuffed leather chair, the tips of his long fingers pressed together forcefully in the shape of the steeple. He’d been practising this pose for over an hour, now.

A brisk flurry of knocks rung out from the door to Jonah’s office. He quickly slicked back with one hand the stray tendrils of hair that had wriggled themselves loose before quickly reassuming his masterfully perfected posture.

“Come in,” he encouraged deliciously, relishing in the sound of his own voice.

The door cracked open and a mess of curly red hair poked through. The woman at the threshold had eyes that glowed amber in the light, a flash of hunger behind their grey pupils.

“Ah,” said Elias, smiling with tight lips, “Miss Tonner.”

  
  
The woman’s eyes darted to the floor, then back to the man sat at the desk. “Daisy’s fine.”

Elias gestured to what he had taken to calling ‘Jon’s’ chair, beckoning for Daisy to sit. She obliged, very _obediently_ , Elias noted.

“Y’wanted to meet with me?” said Daisy as she sat.

“Indeed.” Elias span slightly to and fro in his chair, eyes fixed on Daisy’s. “I have another favour to ask.”

“Alright, then. What is it?”

He bared his teeth in a wicked grin. “I think you’ll like this one.” He stood, adjusting his tie, and went over to the door with a beckoning gesture. “Come with me.”

And Daisy obeyed.

***

The corridors of the Archive had been looking more vibrant recently, though the hue of the paint appeared to constantly shift and change.

Elias lead Daisy down a corridor that hummed a coral orange one minute and blazed crimson red the next. 

“As you’re about to see, Miss Tonner,” said Elias, “our Head Archivist has been going through quite the identity crisis, of late.”

“I’ve heard,” said Daisy. “Basira said he’s been a bit off the wall.”

Elias chuckled. “Quite literally, I’m afraid.”

At this very moment, the crackling of static distorted the air around them and Jon glitched along past them, upside down, walking — if you could really call it that — on the ceiling.

“Shit,” Daisy muttered. “So he is.”  


“You see, Jon has been… Let’s say, ‘adopted’ by an entity that deals in deceit, distortion and madness. We call it the ‘Spiral’.”

  
“Yeah?” Daisy scoffed. “I call it fuckin’ weird.”

Elias bridled slightly. “Yes, well, bizarre as it is, we are forced to deal with it, as we have with each and every one of Jon’s other… Adoptions. There are three different ‘aspects’ to this, um, ‘Affect’.Sometimes, the Spiral presents itself through hyperactivity. Fast, nonsensical talking—“

“Sounds like Jon on a normal day,” said Daisy, rolling her eyes. “Last time I came here—“

“—I don’t care,” Elias said, flashing a sickly sweet smile. “As I was saying, you may be dealing with a particularly… _Energetic_ manifestation of Madness, so watch out for that. Otherwise, you may be faced with the ‘Distortion’…”

“And that is…?”

“Unpleasant to look at.” Elias grimaced. “Let’s hope you don’t have the misfortune of seeing Jon in a fully-fledged state of Distortion. Of course, he seems to… Flicker in a vaguely electronic way regardless, now, so you’ll likely be dealing with fragments of the Distortion no matter what. And, last but certainly not least, there’s the Deceit…”

“I can take that one, no problem,” said Daisy. “All my ex-girlfriends lied to me. I’m used to it.”

“Mm…”

They walked a little further down the corridor, reaching the break room now. Elias exhaled through his nose, biting his bottom lip as if tasting his next words as they formed upon it.

“I believe you’ll find the Deceit to be… Not quite what you expect. Typical of the Spiral, I suppose.”

Elias swung open the break room door, revealing the scene within.

Martin and Tim sat opposite a still-glitching Jon, their poor little faces wracked with confusion.

“So… So you _are_ angry at us?”

“Me? _Angry?_ Never!” Jon drawled, voice trippingly sardonic.

Martin buried his face in his palms, grunting with frustration.

Tim leaned forward. “Jon, stop being a cunt for five seconds and just _explain_ how you _actually feel._ ”

“ _Wooow_ , Tim, I’m _sooo_ hurt, _”_ Jon crooned, rolling his eyes to the high heavens.

Tim stood up, slapping the table and storming off in resignation.

Elias turned to Daisy. “Think you can handle it?”

Daisy tore her eyes from the scene, looked back up at Elias and gave a single, curt nod.

***

The office was cast in shadow. Jonah hardly had the life in him to bother turning on the light. Didn’t make much difference, either way, as his body's eyes were glued shut and shielded in the comfort of his crossed arms on the desk.

The door swung open. Jonah did not sit up.

“Objection, Your honour.”

Jonah heaved wearily. “Go home, Jon.” His voice wavered as he groaned, “ _please._ ”

Jon slammed a hand on the light switch and the bulb in the oval shade hanging from the ceiling flashed on as suddenly and fiercely as a lightning strike.

“Elias, I say,” Jon began, running a hand down the pinstriped lapel of his blue Armani suit, “I won’t rest until that rascal is in prison!”

Jonah tilted his head to one side, blinking in the unwelcome light. His eyes were bloodshot. “I suppose this is the Hunt, is it?” he asked weakly.

“The citizens of our city deserve better!” Jon cried, pacing up and down the emerald green carpet of Jonah’s office. He produced a case file, dropping it at Jonah’s head. “See here: Gross abuse of power, police brutality, _several_ counts of murder — clear evidence of malice aforethought.” He slammed both hands down on the new, aged-oak desk, hard enough to cause Jonah to flinch but not quite enough to jolt him out of his lethargy. “She must be brought to justice, Elias! I shan’t sleep, shan’t sit, shan’t _rest_ until I rid the boroughs of London of this menace!”

Jon continued to pace about the office, chattering incessantly of depositions and juries and convictions. Jonah let his hand drop to his side, dragging itself up the six drawers connected to the desk until it reached the top most one. His hand curled wearily, laboriously around the handle and pulled it with a Herculean effort.

Foam started to form around Jon’s mouth as he chattered, pupils wide and hungry. “Yesh,” he gurgled. “My opening shtatement will blow the jury away! I’ll have her convicted in lesh than an hour! She’ll be in prishon and far from the perpetratorsh of petty crimes for good!”

Jonah’s hand crept into his top drawer, resting upon something cold, hard and metallic.

Jon wiped his mouth frantically. “Then, oho, _then,_ once I get my guilty verdict, I think I’ll become a loan shark! Yes, I’ll do that, and I’ll pursue my debtors for what they owe me, indefinitely!”

Jonah rose slowly from his chair.

Jon’s eyes locked on the pipe at his boss’s side, eyes widening immediately at the sight. He began to pant with excitement.

“I hate you so much, Jon,” Jonah said, his voice so fragile it teetered between a laugh and a sob.

The sounds of brutal pipe murder carried right down to the first floor of the bank next door. Sasha, who was stood at one of the teller’s desks, looked up in the general direction of the noise and frowned.


	8. Endgame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jonah contemplates his humanity and Jon is visited by a handsome reaper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw minor references to bodily mutilation

_Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick_

“Looks like your time’s running out, Jon,” said the young man at the bedside with a little smile.

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

Everything was so still, here. So quiet.

Oliver Banks folded his hands in his lap, glancing at the limp mass of brutalised flesh wrapped up in bandages besides him. “You know, I was like you, once. Though, I like to imagine I looked a bit nicer when _I_ died.”

Jon, unsurprisingly, didn’t respond.

“I got better, don’t worry,” said Oliver, patting the edge of the hospital mattress reassuringly. “You will too, you know. If you make the right choice, that is.”

Suddenly, Jon continued not to respond.

“The thing is, Jon,” Oliver began hesitantly, “right now, you have a choice. You’ve put it off a long time, but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but still _too_ human to survive. You’re balanced on an edge, where—“

A long, shrill, menacing ‘beep’ trilled from the whirring machine on the other side of Jon’s bed.

Oliver grimaced. “Ah,” he said. “Bugger.”

The noise alerted someone down the hall and Oliver shot up.

“Well, s’pose you’ve made your choice, then,” he said, hurrying to the door. “Bye, Jon. For good, apparently.”

A moment later, Georgie stumbled into the room, looking around for a person who wasn’t there. And perhaps he never had been.

Her eyes flitted to the monitor, which displayed a flatline.

Georgie threw up her hands in exasperation. “Well, _that’s_ a bit of a dick move.”

***

Jonah’s breath condensed on the stone floor, forming an ever-growing dark patch before him.

The sound of chains rattling and clinking echoed all about the cell like sadistic laughter that mocked and jeered him. He had no humanity left with which to weep, yet the power that once inspired him was waning. There wasn’t enough of _Elias_ left to move and hardly enough _Jonah_ left to think. As for the Eye… Well. It hadn’t abandoned him quite yet.

Was it worth it? 

This question had been swimming in Jonah’s mind for the past six months, taunting him, _torturing_ him. He agonised over it, turning the memory of Jon’s tenderised flesh and bones over in his mind with meticulous obsession. Could a thing like that even die? A thing so… Vandalised by other entities?

Jonah hadn’t felt fear for centuries. Now, though, he feared something eternal, something that mocked the very purpose of his _being_ with such earnest that it shook the foundations of his own perceived reality. The fear crushed him like an ant under its giant, terrible boot. It was a reminder of his mortality and, most horrible of all — his pathetic humanity.

Elias had loved. Elias had hated. Elias had _feared._ He had feared James Wright, who had, in turn, loved and hated and feared just the same. There had been a time when Jonah had loved. When he’d hated. Oh, he had _hated_ so much, and so dearly — but it is such a thin membrane that separates hatred from love. The outcome is nearly always identical.

***

Much like a man who ordered a Meatball Marinara with Italian bread at subway and got a Chicken Teriyaki with 9 grain honey oat bread instead, Jon wasn’t very impressed when he came back from the dead.

Being undead, Jon observed, felt a lot like the days in between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The sensation of aimlessness, of having all the time in the world with nothing to do. After all, once mortality’s off the table, where’s the fun in anything? Skydiving isn’t nearly as thrilling if you know you can’t die. You’re just waiting for the ground to catch up to you, and you can do that at low cost by jumping off a swing in the playground.

Operating under the assumption that the dead, along with those without bank accounts, can’t hold leases on apartments, Jon chose the Magnus Institute as his destination once he left his body behind. It had always been one of his favourite haunts, after all.

The last that Jon had seen of the long, winding halls of the Archives, they had been relatively full of life. Now, they were more cold and unforgiving than his grandmother. With no chains to rattle, Jon gave a few, rather apathetic ‘woo’s and ‘nevermore’s before giving up and going to make himself a cup of tea.

Despite technically not having hands, Jon was able to switch the kettle on and pour himself a mug just fine. The break room was far too empty, however, and he still didn’t much like being reminded of the Wide Open, so he took a little stroll through the Archives in search of some company.

“Tim?” he called, swilling the dregs of his tea around in the mug. “Tim? — God, I hope they can still hear me, in this state. Martin?”

The water pipes running along the walls creaked.

“Martin?” Jon called, a little concern creeping into his tone, now. “Where on earth have they got to? Martin—“

“Jon?”

He spun around.

A young woman with very obviously self-inflicted blunt bangs stared at him, awe-struck.

“Melanie,” Jon whispered, blinking. “What — what are you—“

“Um, I work here?” she said, incredulously. “What are _you_ doing here, dead-boy? Georgie said you flatlined.”

Jon didn’t take to being called ‘dead-boy’, but his petulant days were well behind him. He opted for bitchy, instead. “Oh, well, if _Georgie_ said it, it _must_ be true.”

“Is this one of your…” Melanie gestured at him vaguely, “… Things? You know, your identity crises?”

“It’s not a crisis,” Jon replied. “I just… Got better.”

Melanie scoffed. “Wow. Well, don’t let me interrupt your… _Ghostly activity.”_

“Oh, that is _so_ like you to undermine my accomplishments,” Jon drawled. “I come _back from the dead_ and all you can do is deride me.”

“I’m not deriding you,” said Melanie, rolling her eyes. “I mean, you are _literally_ a ghost. You’re the textbook definition of one.”

“Just because I’m a translucent apparition that resembles my living body before I died and I walk the halls of the place I spent the most time in while I was alive — alright, _fine_ , I’m a sodding ghost.” Jon crossed his arms furiously. “And, if you’re not careful, I’ll shoot you too.”

Melanie gave a low, hollow laugh. “Wow,” she chuckled, “ _wow_. Uncalled for.”

“Well, now you know how it feels to be pressed on something sensitive,” Jon sassed. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go and find Martin. Or Tim. Not that I have favourites.”

“Alright,” said Melanie, putting up her hands in defense. “Don’t let me stop you. But, uh, he won’t be down here. Martin, that is.”

Jon frowned. “Well, where _will_ he be?”

“You’ve missed a lot, Jon.” Melanie pulled her lips into a thin smile. “He’s someone else’s assistant now.”  


“… Whose?”


	9. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon finds out about Martin's new employer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw again for, you guessed it, references to bodily mutilation

Having his own office had its perks. The Archives had been so cold, all the time, and so _dusty_. It was a dungeon. But it had been home.

It was warm, in here. A gentle warmth, too. Not the stifling heat that built up downstairs in the summer, the heat that brought out all the odours that had been hibernating in the walls. It smelt _nice_ , in here. It smelt like the sea.

Martin nudged his glasses a little further up the bridge of his nose, tapping away at the keyboard with the other hand. He tapped each key to the rhythm of the song bleeding from the bluetooth earphones hanging about his neck, his lips mouthing along to the lyrics — he’d picked them up fairly quickly, as the majority of them were just repetitions of the word ‘nobody’.

All of a sudden, the gentle warmth dissipated into a chill. Martin’s teeth chattered at the shift. He sat back in his nice, soft, non-broken chair and span around to face the door. It was closed, and no one was there.

Until they were.

Martin was filled with a sense of dread before his eyes could even catch up. The apparition materialised slowly before him, seeping out through the wall like silk through a net. The resemblance was uncanny — unbearably so.

“Martin!” cried Jon’s spirit, the last of his translucent flesh passing through the wall. His glowing teeth bared themselves in a grin. “Goodness, look at this! Your very own office! Fancy that.”

Martin, who was cowering under the desk now, shuddered. “J-Jon? It — i-it’s not you, it can’t be… You’re not _real…_ ” He shook his head, eyes shut tightly.

“Of course it’s me,” Jon scoffed with a wave. “I just had a bit of a shocker back there with Elias. But I’m back, now, Martin. It’s me. Your boss! I’m back.”

Martin shook as he clambered out from under the desk slowly. “Oh, God. Jon—“

“There we go,” said Jon, “ _that’s_ the reaction I was hoping for. Come on, bring it in—“

“—Jon,” Martin said, almost at a whisper, “you can’t be here.”

“Yes, I bloody well _can,”_ Jon replied indignantly. “I was brutalised by my superior, I should at _least_ be allowed to haunt my own place of work.”

“God.” Martin stood to his full height now, looking down resolutely at the floor. “No, Jon. You can’t be _in here_. With me.”

Jon frowned with his pale, blue lips. “What do you mean?”

“Look — it’s… i-it’s great, that you’re… _Sort of_ alive, an' all, but…” Martin crossed his arms, “well… I’m working for someone else, now.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Jon, pursing his lips. “Moved on a bit quick, if you ask me.”

“You were _dead._ For _six months.”_

“Still,” Jon looked askance. “Could’ve dropped a message. Written a postcard. _Something_.”

Martin squinted at his former boss incredulously. “Y—you weren’t _breathing,_ Jon.”

“Oh!” Jon cried. “Oh, I see! And that just — just _erases_ four years of being your boss, does it?”

“Jon,” Martin said, softly now, tilting his head with sympathy. “I haven’t replaced you, if that’s what you’re getting at. I just moved on.”

Jon crossed his translucid arms, tossing his head to the side. He went quiet for a moment. “What’s her name?” he asked, his tone like ivy.

“ _His_ name is Peter.”

Jon scoffed. “Dreadful name. I knew a Peter who used to wet his pants.”

“Was this when you were three?”

“No,” Jon hissed, rolling his eyes. “… Eight, actually. Very embarrassing, at that age.”

Martin sighed. “Right.” He chewed on his next words for a minute. “Jon, I need to ask you to leave.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right, throw me out of your office, why don’t you?” Jon pivoted in the air, turning towards the wall. “I might just have a word with this _‘_ Peter’ of yours.”

“Good luck with that,” Martin muttered, laughing hollowly to himself as the apparition of Jon sunk back into the wall.

***

Having been so busy not being alive in the past six months, Jon had yet to find out about Elias Bouchard’s incarceration. He also had yet to find out about the true aftermath of the Unknowing — which, of course, didn’t happen, as its ringleader had been launched into the Vast before the ritual could be consummated. Over the course of his many brief terms as an acolyte of each entity, Jon had come to see Elias as a figure of constancy in the invariable variety of his chaotic life. 

For this reason, Jon ghoulishly wailed all the way up to the top floor of the institute, where the Head’s office was, in a bid to find Elias. As much as Jon resented being tenderised with a pipe, he had to admit that Elias was a resolute and effective problem solver. Even if some of his solutions seemed very pipe-based.

When Jon reached the Head’s office, however, he found that the door was locked. He knocked on it feverishly with his diaphanous hands, eliciting only the gentlest of taps.

“Hello? Elias? Elias, we have a bit of a situation out here.”

The door opened, seemingly of its own accord. Only now did it occur to Jon that he could’ve just floated through, being selectively immaterial and all.

At Elias’ old desk sat a man dressed head-to-toe in yellow waterproofs. Seawater pooled on the floor around the desk, creating a steadily breathing tide. The man did not look up from his paper, even as Jon floated in and shut the door behind him.

“Sorry,” said Jon, frowning, “uh.. Where is Elias Bouchard?”

The man continued to read for a moment before apparently coming to the end of his sentence, folding the paper into a quarter and setting it down to one side. He looked up with some reluctance at last. “Locked up, I’m afraid,” he said with a wan smile. 

Jon furrowed his brow and looked back at the door as if expecting Elias to burst in at that moment, dressed in a striped uniform with a black mask on. He looked back at the man. “And who are you?”

“Oh, forgive me,” said the man, giving no reason to do so as he did not extend a hand nor rise from his stool. “I’m Peter Lukas. Head of the Magnus Institute.”

Jon’s eyes grew wide at once. “You… You’re Martin’s new boss, aren’t you?”

Peter smiled again, though no brighter than before. “Yes, that’s right. Isn’t he lovely?”

“Wonderful,” Jon said through gritted teeth.

“Did you want something?”

All other thought had left Jon’s mind, at this point, so he was left rather speechless.

“If you’re wondering about your position here, it’s still very much yours — whether you want it or not, I’m afraid.” Peter rummaged about in one of Elias’ old drawers, wiping a bit of residual blood off on his banana-hued trousers as he produced a very thick file from one of them. “Your contract, interestingly, seemed to account for this particular… Predicament. See? Right there.”

Sure enough, in the finest print at the very corner of the second-to-last page of Jon’s contract — the one absolutely nobody reads — the text read:

_In the event of death, or rather just barely lacking thereof, the Archivist shall continue to hold their position until the state of nonbeing is absolutely definite. If the Archivist should manifest in any way beyond their physical death, employment is to continue until further notice._

“Fuck me, so it is.” Jon stared down at the print, aghast.

“I trust you’ll be able to continue work as normal as possible,” said Peter.

“Well,” said Jon, still frowning, “there must be… Rules against this. I mean, this is what unions are for, right? Surely an employer can’t force people to work beyond the grave?”

“Oh, you’d be very surprised.”

“You know, now that I think about it,” Jon said, “I actually don’t think I would be.”

Peter stored the contract and the overfilled file away again and gave Jon another placid smile. “So. Will that be all?”

Jon awoke from his stupor of proletariat rage and directed his anger elsewhere. “No.” He snapped. “No, in fact, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

“Oh?” Peter said, with all the dread of a man stuck on the telephone with a distant relative.

“Yes,” said Jon. “When… e-exactly, did Martin… fall under your employment?”

“Goodness,” Peter sighed, looking off to one side thoughtfully. “Pretty much immediately after Elias was arrested for second degree murder and _you_ were carried off to the mortician, I believe.”

Jon chuckled mirthlessly. “Wow.” He shook his head. “Immediately, huh?”

“Pretty much!” Peter gave that same, pallid smile once again. “Now. Is _that_ all? It’s just that I was hoping to have some privacy.”

Jon began to glide away. “You’ll always be the _other boss_ , you know?” he said, stopping for a moment. “I was his first.”

Peter looked rather nonplussed at this. “Sorry, what?”

But Jon had already began to dissolve through the wall with far more ease than he had earlier.

***

Jon wafted like a bad smell through the corridors of the Archives for the rest of the day, his head bowed to the floor. Melanie acknowledged him once or twice with a nod, but he never noticed. Or else just didn’t care.

Around six o’clock. when Melanie was about to clock out, Tim appeared at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the Archives, just as Jon materialised through a nearby wall.

“Jon!" Tim cried delightfully. “Fancy seeing you in this neck of the woods again. I thought you’d died!”

Jon apparently heard nothing, as he continued to float on listlessly like a waif right past Tim.

“Hey, I never got to tell you,” said Tim, still grinning cheerfully. “Cheers. For getting rid of Grimaldi. Or, Nikola, whatever it called itself. I always wanted to do it myself, of course, but knowing that it’s gone..” Tim’s voice wavered a little, but soon regained its brightness. “You’re a hero, Jon. A true friend.”

But Jon neither saw nor heard him. All he saw was mist, the gentle slush of waves echoing in the distance. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jonny voice martin WILL be okay


	10. Caught Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jonah works on his unchecked aggression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw spiders ;)
> 
> this one's short, but there's more to come!!

“It’s just… It’s just not _fair._ ”

The prisoner next door sighed. It was going to be another long day in the cell next to Elias Bouchard’s.

“I did everything right. I was the perfect disciple,” the hate-filled little man ranted, pacing up and down — as much as one could pace in six square feet — the stone floor of his cell. “What do I get for it? Fucked over, that’s what.” 

Jonah sat down on the rim of his metal toilet and fumed away silently for a moment, much to the relief of his fellow inmates. Less than a minute later, however, he took a handful of toilet paper and began to rip at it as he started his tirade back up.

“It’s not human. Not anymore. The Archivist is _meant_ to be a _human._ Not… Not the lovechild of a Fear God orgy.”

The prisoner in the cell across from Elias Bouchard’s pursed his lips and frowned sympathetically. “Yeah? And what _else_ is going on?”

Jonah looked at him incredulously, perhaps in shock that anyone was actually paying attention. “Nothing… ?”

“You sure?” cooed the prisoner. “A lot of anger issues stem from childhood.”

“I DO NOT HAVE ANGER ISSUES!” Jonah exploded, throwing the mess of shredded toilet paper down. His eyes were wide and wild, starving from the deprivation of knowledge. 

The prisoner in the cell opposite smiled dumbly as Jonah crept to the edge of his cage, hands curling around the prison bars while he bore deep into the other prisoner’s mind and found… Nothing. 

Jonah seethed, gripping the bars as if they were the fragile necks of bunny rabbits. “I… _hate_ … this place. So much.”

“Hey,” said the prisoner opposite. “You and me both, pal.”

“Shut up, Kyle,” Jonah sneered. “Stop trying to _relate_ to me. Nobody likes you, you know! You don’t belong here. You didn’t even kill anyone. You’re only in protected custody because you were a police officer.”

Kyle shook his head sagely. “You’re only taking your anger out on me because I resemble an older male figure.”

“I don’t have fucking anger issues! _God!_ ” Jonah smacked the iron bars with both hands, storming off just to the back of his cell.

There was only one window in Jonah’s cell, right at the very top of the wall, inches from the ceiling. A tiny little rectangular slit severed with several short bars that cast elongated shadows on the cold, stone floor. Jonah lay down on the floor, as he had often taken to doing these past few months, and stared at the cobweb in the top left corner of the cell. He had watched the spider that built it over many weeks until it went missing one day, abandoning the web. Jonah had taken this as a sign. The Archivist had died, at last, and thus the Web had lost interest. 

As he stared at the empty structure, the tiniest trickle of doubt seeped into Jonah’s consciousness. Only a drop, the significance of a tear, but doubt all the same. It was enough to render him detestable to the Eye — and yet it stayed with him still, for he did not die. Not yet. The Eye kept him safe, and it would only do so if it meant he was worth something — so there was still hope. The plan had faltered, but not failed entirely.

As this occurred to him, Jonah spied a Black Widow creep across the gossamer that had been desolate just moments before, and he smiled.


	11. Dimmed, Skimmed and Skinned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon finds refuge in the Dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for descriptions of bodily mutilation  
> tw blood mention  
> tw knife mention

As Jon sank into the cold sludge that resembled sand, his grey, lifeless eyes gazed out at the horizon, upon which the lustreless sun was perched. Had he not been in this Forsaken state, he might have taken notice of how excruciatingly _vast_ the beach was, stretching out either side of him forever. There were mountains in the far distance, but something told him they were an illusion. Not that he had any intention of finding out.

The sun didn’t emit light the same way it did on earth. It had the quality of a broken fluorescent bathroom can light, recessed into a flat, grey ceiling. It seemed that the beach was only lit in the way that it was because that was how one expected the light to behave, despite the source being inadequate.

It was impossible to know how long he’d been here. When was the last time any of the entities cared much for the human construct of time? He might’ve been there days, perhaps seconds, before he grew sick of the pallid ring of light far on the horizon.

Jon was so weary of _knowing._ Every statement he’d read at the beginning of his term as the Archivist had fuelled him but ever since he let that first worm work its way under his skin, all the statements did was make Jon resent the information he had at his fingertips. Everything wrong in his life had stemmed from _knowing_. He hated reading those statements, and not just because they unsettled him at times. When he found out the truth about the fear entities, his whole world had been flip-turned upside down. Jon was just the grim, twisted Prince of Bel Air. He missed the days when he knew nothing about the sheer scope of that world. He missed when Tim’s salacious quips were the worst part of his day. He missed having lunch with Martin.

Either of its own accord or through some untapped power that Jon unleashed at that moment, the sun began to fade away to nothing. A sigh escaped Jon’s lips as the world around him dimmed with it, light dissipating like air in patches — only a reminder of the Forsaken’s superficiality.

And then, his world was dark. Gorgeously dark. And from the darkness rang an isolated ‘G’ note on some cosmic piano. Jon gave a smirk that absolutely nobody could see.

He saw the flash a full minute before the deafening crack of the sound barrier breaking.

Jon was jerked back fifty feet up the beach, landing with a resounding squelch in the slush-like sand.

He reeled, shielding his eyes with a wince as the sheer force of the explosion on the horizon forced everything in the remotest vicinity backwards.

Through the ringing caused by the shockwave, Jon heard a voice call his name with fevered desperation.

“Jon… ? Jon?” The voice drew closer, yelling over the crackling of the air as it boiled. “Jon!”

Jon blinked, forsaking his earlier pledge to the darkness as he searched desperately for the source of this voice.

“I’m here, Jon! I’m over here!” The voice was next to him now, so close he could feel the hot breath against his face. Jon turned towards the warmth and at last his eyes focused on an all-too-welcome figure.

Martin stood over Jon, one hand gripping Jon's arm and tugging at it desperately, the other wielding a large machete. “You need to get up! Come with me.”

Clambering to his feet, Jon clung to Martin for dear life. “Martin,” he huffed, clutching him by the shoulders. “You came for me.” A smile crept across his lips. “You _saved_ me.”

“I know, I know, I’m wonderful,” Martin said with a dismissive wave, “but you’ve got to come with me, _now.”_

“But what about Peter Lukas?” 

“I killed him!” Martin cried with a gleeful smile. In the distance, driving through the echo of the explosion, the guitar solo from My Chemical Romance’s ‘Black Parade’ rang out. 

Martin’s eyes were wide and crazed, hair wild, sticking out in every which way. Jon swayed in place, trying to regain balance as the mushroom cloud steadily gained on them. Martin hooked his arm around Jon’s waist and dragged him off as the mist began to disappear.

***

They were stood in a paradise. 

Fresh, clean air filled Jon’s lungs, stopping to complement the architecture before being exhaled again. Rustling under his bare feet, the absinthe grass was lush and glistening with dew, each and every blade sparkling like an emerald. The smell of pastries and fruit and freshly brewed lemongrass tea surrounded them, sweet aromas caressing their skin. Gentle birdsong trilled here and there, just loud enough to hear but soft enough to bear. _More_ than bear. Jon took just a moment, one moment of pure humanity, to listen and breathe and smell and feel. He was so engrossed in his reverie, in fact, that he hardly noticed when Martin left and came back covered in blood.

Jon turned to his former assistant with a smile. “Look at the sky, Martin,” he sighed. “It’s so _blue_.”

“Isn’t it just?” Martin replied with a smile, toasting the severed head of a Flesh avatar to the sky.

A lanky, elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt and pair of distressed jorts approached them, perching a pair of rose sunglasses up on his head. “Do you like it?” he asked with a grin. “I painted it myself, you know.”

Martin wiped away a glob of viscera from the corner of his mouth, then handed the severed head in his right hand to Jon. “Hold this.” He walked up briskly to the man and gutted him in one swift slash. The man fell to the ground, the smile not leaving his face. 

Jon gazed down at the eviscerated old man, rather nonplussed as Martin took back the severed head.

“Sorry about that,” said Martin with a little sigh of content. “I’ve been on a bit of a massacre, recently, as you might’ve guessed. Been killing _a lot_ of avatars.”

Jon glanced furtively at him.

“Just the evil ones,” Martin amended. “Well, they’re pretty much all evil, but you’re exempt. You see, when I was working under Peter, I found out about the Extinction. It’s a new entity that’s started to coalesce, and he said the only way for me to stop it was if I became an avatar of the Lonely.”

“Ah,” said Jon, not understanding.

“You sort of beat me to it, though, so I figured that there was no point becoming a Lonely avatar myself, right? But _then_ I started thinking about how unfair it all was. I mean, I’ve fancied you — and I’ve never said this before, I know, but I think now’s probably an appropriate time — but I’ve fancied you for ages, right, and Peter was saying that I couldn’t even _be in the same room_ as you anymore, and that really pissed me off quite a bit, actually, so I thought, you know, _kill_ Peter, right? Like, it just made so much sense at the time, you know? In retrospect, I do see that it was a touch rash, but I think I’ve really grown from the experience, if you know what I mean. You know what I mean?”

Jon absently nudged the disembowelled corpse of the old man. “Yeah.”

“I s’pose what I’m trying to say is,” Martin began, fiddling with the dangling ear cartilage of the severed head, “… Will you be my boss again?”

Jon looked up at Martin at once, smiling. “Oh, Martin,” he sighed. “I’d love to.” After a pause, Jon pointed down at the body, running the blade of his tongue along his top lip. “May I?”

Many miles away, the twittering of songbirds was drowned out by a prison siren going off. Elias Bouchard’s cell was empty.


	12. A Crack in the Veneer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon has his final showdown with Jonah Magnus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to the beginning of the end! hope you enjoy :D
> 
> TW for graphic descriptions of eldritch violence

“Are you sure about this?”

Jon and Martin’s footsteps echoed through the dingy halls of the Archives as they flew down the stairs, Jon in the lead.

“I’m certain,” said Jon, out of breath as he touched down at the bottom. He took a severed finger out from his pocket and nibbled at the fingertip nervously. 

Martin placed his non-machete-wielding hand on Jon’s shoulder, perhaps to reassure or perhaps to wipe off some residual blood. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I found a way to leave this place, when I raided Peter’s office after chopping him up.” Martin gestured to his eyes. “If we get rid of these,” he said, “we can leave. Forever. He won’t control us anymore.”

“As delicious as that sounds,” said Jon, chewing away at a little chunk of calf — and not of the bovine variety — in the corner of his mouth, “I do have to do this. Not just for my own satisfaction, for _everyone_. But also mostly for my own satisfaction.”

“How do you even know for certain that he’s _here?_ Isn’t he meant to be, you know, in prison?”

Jon spun around to face Martin, still jogging down the corridor as he spoke, “I’ve got a friend on the _inside._ ”

Indeed, as they spoke, Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh was teeming with security, rushing to find the escaped prisoner — one ‘Elias Bouchard’. Among them was Miss Alice ‘Daisy’ Tonner, who had snuck out of her own cell in a women’s prison many months prior and was now wearing a dead warden’s garb. Right in the midst of the chaos, Daisy produced her mobile from her left pocket and texted Jon.

Jonah was on his way. 

Hearing the thundering steps from outside, Melanie and Georgie darted out of Artefact storage to find the source of the commotion.

“Georgie?” said Jon as he and Martin slowed to a halt before them. 

“We weren’t kissing,” Georgie said quickly.

Jon frowned. “Right. Have either of you seen Elias?”

Melanie shook her head.

“Hang on,” said Georgie, furrowing her brow, “Didn’t you become a ghost?”

“I got better,” Jon replied with a wave. “Georgie, you haven’t seen Elias, have you?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

Melanie nudged her. “I told you about him, remember? White guy, evil-looking, smells of pot?”

“Oh,” Georgie replied, her eyes drifting off to gaze far into the distance. “Like that guy over there?”

Jon and Martin spun around at once.

Jonah’s hand twitched at his side, yellowed fingernails long and cracked with neglect. His shoulders trembled as they rose and lowered with the immense weight of his breath. He stood hunched and shuddering, his platinum hair lank all about his gaunt face, lips parted to partially bare mildewed teeth in a sickening snarl. Worst of all were his depthless eyes; they pierced like arrows, snaring on the tissue of their victim’s consciousness and drawing out the thoughts with desperate slowness, nauseating slowness. 

“I’ve been keeping an Eye on you, Jon. From my prison cell,” Jonah hissed, his voice low and hoarse.

Jon stepped towards him. “Martin. Get Georgie and Melanie out of here.”

“But—“

“Do it,” said Jon, turning to look at Martin in the eye. “I’m giving you an instruction. As your boss.”

Martin grinned.

As Georgie and Melanie were ushered back into the storage room, the door being blocked with shelves from the sound of it, Jon took another step towards his former superior.  


“You know, I can’t decide whether it’s the Web or the Hunt that brought us together again, Jonah,” he began, gazing intently at him.

Jonah narrowed his eyes. “How did you… _Oh._ ” He gave a great, open-mouthed smile, sighing in ecstasy. “Oh, Jon. Make me the happiest monster on earth. Tell me you’ve at last embraced the Beholding.”

Jon looked at Jonah carefully, eyes squinted. He smiled gently. “No.”

Jonah scowled. “Then… _How?”_

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

A shuddering, meandering laugh tumbled from Jonah’s cracked lips. “You’re no better than _them_ , you know. No better than me. You’re no more human. That’s the thing about avatars, Jon. They’re all human. Only humans really know what makes a person _dread._ Well… there is _one_ thing that knows better. Knows _all_ better. And thats—… What are you doing?”

Jon pinched the screen of his iPhone, causing the image to zoom out. He stopped recording, switched it off and stuffed the mobile away hastily. “Just thought I’d get a little clip of your monologue. I have a _very_ large following on Tik Tok, you know.”  


Jonah stared at the Archivist incredulously. “What’s a ‘Tik Tok’?”

“It’s great. Martin set it up for me. People can duet your little speech, adding their own input, or else use the sound to create their _own_ evil soliloquy videos, or—“

“Alright, wh—… what-whatever.” Jonah shook his head furiously, waving his hands. He took a second to compose himself. “Look, Jon,” he began again with a sigh, “I chose you for a _reason_. You have a drive inside you that the Eye embodies. The need to _know,_ to watch and listen and ascertain. Why do you think you became so easily… Enamoured with the other entities? It’s because you had to _know_ how it felt, you _—_ put the sodding phone away, for God’s sakes — you were addicted to _knowing_. When you were overtaken by the Stranger, what saved you? It was your need to understand, the urge to question and interrogate. Didn’t it feel nice to know all about the entities? Doesn’t the knowledge empower you? Fuel you?“

Jon scoffed. “Who needs knowledge to feed on when you’ve got perfectly good fingers?” As he said this, he produced a middle, index and a pinky from his pocket, taking a pointed bite out of the middle and keeping his eye on Jonah all the while.

“The Flesh really isn’t a good look on you,” said Jonah, rolling his eyes with a grimace.

In the split second that Jonah’s eyes weren’t meeting Jon’s, Jon focused every corner of his mind on the stupid, arrogant little man stood now only a few feet from him.

A sharp gasp drew from Jonah’s lips as his skin began to crawl with Filth. His eyes grew wide as they latched back onto Jon’s — but it was far too late.

Or was it?

“Did I ever tell you about your grandmother, Archivist?” Jonah barely managed, writhing almost as violently as the critters squirming under his pale skin. His eyes began to glow a very soft blue.

Jon took a step towards him. “She died years ago,” he said, tonelessly. He held up a hand, pinching something small and invisible in the air. “I quit cigarettes around the same time.” He smirked, turning the imaginary stub around and reaching out towards Jonah with it. “Smoking kills, y’know.”

A searing agony coursed through Jonah’s Flesh, boiling his blood until it sang the haunting melody of a teakettle. Crimson-tinted steam seeped through the porous holes, frying their slithering inhabitants.

Jonah’s teeth were welded shut with anguish but he spoke brazenly through the grit. “Have you ever wondered—” he paused to groan, though not for long, “—h-how your parents _really_ died?”

“Not interested.” Jon yawned. He threw up a palm. “Talk to the hand, grandpa.”

The floor beneath Jonah began to soften and give until it turned to sludge, sending him sinking slowly down, knee deep within moments. Jonah thrashed and seethed and writhed to no avail, eyes still shining with cerulean light. 

“Fine,” he grunted, clawing desperately at the melting stone floor, now up to his waist. “If you won’t listen… Perhaps your _former assistant_ will.”

Jon’s eyes flashed with anger. The open palm he held out in front of himself curled into a claw, twisting to one side as he glared down at Jonah’s all-too malleable limbs. “I’ll have you know,” said Jon, “he’s my _former_ former assistant.”

With this, Jonah’s arms started to stretch and curl and twist grotesquely until they resembled thick spools of braided rope. The holes of Corruption, now stretched into caverns, spilled over with soft boiled insects that jumped and twitched from the heat, sitting just on top of the bubbling slush that was once the floor.

His eyes glowing brighter still, Jonah gurgled, “you can’t destroy that from which you came, Archivist! You—“

Suddenly, Jonah went quiet for the first Goddamn time in his life. 

The menacing blue tint of his iris faded as his expression melted from that of wrath to eerie disquiet. He gasped quietly as he gazed up at what used to be Jon. What was now…

As the sludge filled his mouth, tears welled in the corners of Jonah Magnus’s eyes. “B-Barnabas? Is — I-is that… ? No. No, it can’t — you’re not—“ Of course, every word he said was indistinguishable. 

Jonah’s tears, and all his dignity with them, dripped down and mingled with the rancid sludge, popping and crackling like water on a frying pan or Rice Krispies in milk.

“Please,” he wept, the word just barely manifesting as a gargle. “I… I can’t die.” His voiceless speech fell to a gagged whisper, now. “ _I don’t want to_.”

Jon held up two fists to his eyes and turned them back and forth in a ‘boohoo’ motion, twisting his face into mock-misery. “Aw, I’m sorry, did somebody get addicted to immortality?” It was about here that a part of Jon debated that this was perhaps crossing a line, but something Else inside of him urged him to go on.

The now bloodshot eyes of Jonah Magnus, trapped in the deformed, hell-bound flesh prison of Elias Bouchard, succumbed to the sludge, still wide and hungry as they were engulfed in Darkness.

Though he could not see, Jonah Magnus was not yet destroyed. Rather, he was in Stasis. Without his sight, he had only the sensation of agony and dread with which to cling to our mortal stratum.

Until he heard a voice. Soft and deep and far, far away.

“ _Keep it breezy, baby._ ”

And that was the end of a very, very, _very_ bad day for Jonah Magnus.

As Jonathan Sims stood staring into the now empty sinkhole in the ground before him, he heard a door nearby click open and Basira Hussein poked her head around the door, looking unimpressed.

  
  
“Could you keep it down out there? I’m trying to read.”

Jonathan looked up at her, feeling quite spectacularly… Normal. “Yeah,” he said gently. “Yeah, we will.”

***

“Dinner is served!”

Jonathan rubbed his hands together delightfully, grinning as Martin placed a plate of roast beef and potatoes down in front of him. “Now _that_ is some good cow,” he observed, poking the tender sirloin with his fork.

Martin went to the back door, stepping out into the garden. “Come in, Elias. Dinner’s ready.”

“Coming!”

The middle aged man lying in the hammock coughed up billows of smoke as he climbed out carefully and stood up, putting his joint out on his scarred right hand. He slipped off his beanie hat as he ducked inside the cottage.

“Look what Martin’s made,” said Jonathan, mouth already full with green beans. “The flavour is outstanding!”

Elias sat down at the table and placed a napkin over his lap, yawning slightly. “Can I go out into town after supper?” he asked, rubbing the skin around his glass eyes.

“I don’t see why not,” said Martin jovially, taking his own seat at the table, now. “What do you think, Jon?”

Jonathan nodded sagely. “Of course you can. You do have the body of a middle aged white man, so you should get very good service wherever you go. Don’t take any pills while you’re out, though.”

“Yes, no ecstasy for you, I’m afraid.” said Martin.

Elias scoffed. “Yeah, right, ‘cause people still take _ecstasy_ in 2019.”

“We’re just looking out for you, that’s all,” said Jonathan.

Elias pushed the food around on his plate for a bit before putting down his fork. “Can I go now?”

“Eat your dinner, Elias,” said Jonathan.

“Yes, eat your greens, Elias, they’re good for you,” said Martin. “Especially after hitting a fat toke like that.”

Elias shifted restlessly in his seat. “I know, but could you just save my plate? I’ll warm it up when I get home. I’ll have mad munchies then, I promise.”

“Oh, alright then,” Jonathan said with a smile of endearment.

“Thanks, Mr. Sims.” Elias stood and went to the front door, pulling on a green bomber jacket.

“Don’t forget your inhaler!” Martin called after him. Elias produced one from his pocket and shook it at them reassuringly before ducking out the door.

Jonathan sighed. “Boomers, these days.”

“Always on the lash,” Martin tutted, throwing his napkin down as he stood to go to the toilet.

After clearing his plate, Jonathan stepped outside into the back garden for a stroll. It was a modest yard but it was enough space to think by oneself. Jonathan perched on the rainbow hammock, swinging idly as he gazed up at the dying light of day. As he swung, he felt a little trickle of worry for Elias, the real Elias, who was out in the world by himself, alone, at night. It felt good to fear the dark again. The fear was gentle but present nonetheless, and it reminded Jonathan fondly of his humanity.

Everything was much gentler, now. The love was gentle. There was no obsession or lechery, only tender intimacy. What was once hatred had thawed into yet-to-be realised potential for redemption. All sensation was soft and meek.

It bored Jonathan.

He gazed into the empty sky, which was tall and unimposing and yet not so grand as to intimidate. He gazed into it and longed to see it crumble.

And if you look very closely at the same sky, you might just see a little crack in the veneer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU to everybody for reading and commenting on this fic! It's been a blast to write and I'm really amazed that people enjoyed it! If you liked this fic please consider supporting me on ko-fi @ Ko-fi.com/bezart + check out my tumblr for more tma content including The Magnus Archives the Musical @ forsakencorruption.tumblr.com! Love you all <3


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